The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-10-13
DIR. HALLS OFFER
OF 1oO,o 900 Acres of Georgia Lands to
Irish Em!grents.

Macon (Gd1 Cor. atlanta Constitution.
The announcement that is going the
rounds of the Georgia press, that DR.. j. II.
Hall, of jacksonville, will give away
100, 600 acres of Georgia lands to suffering
Irish who will emigrate to this country has
excited considerable interest i'll this section
of the country.
To-day your correspondent interviewed
| Col. A. G. Butt, who has an extensive
! knowledge of the land interests of Southern
and Central Georgia. Col. Butt said
II cannot account for the extent OF Dr.
Halls claim unless it antedates the existing
order of things. know the landed inter
est of Georgia pretty well, and l know of
no such enormous body of land owned by
any one man in the State
Are not the lifts, of Triton and Albany,
about the largest holders of pine landsfn
They were, but they have sold out a
great deal of their lands. A few years ago
n. A. Tiff, of Albany, and H. H. Tiff, of
Triton, were among the largest holders Of
timber land in the pine belt"
The talk then drifted into the old head
right system, and Col. Butt explained why
there are still large bodies of land claimed
by Northern and Western parties under
those old deeds
You must know said he, 'that there
was a great deal of crookedness in the land
surveys of Georgia about the time of the
famous Yazoo fraud.
Between the years 1850 and 1870 ire
sponsible parties laid claim to enormous
bodies of land under this system. These
transactions were confined to about one
fourth of the State, that portion lying east
of a line beginning at the Florida line and
including all the lands east of the second
and third districts of old Wayne, up to the
Altamaha river. From thence up the
Altamaha to the Oconee, thence up the
Oconee to the Appalachee, thence across to
Hog mountain and across to the South
Carolina line at Tugalo river to the mouth
of Panther creek.
THE method was to 60 and establish a
head right at a given point, and from that
point lay claim to as much land as the per-
son wished to claim without ever putting a
compass or chain to it. Here are some facts
from slip that had printed some years
ago for the information of Western and
Northern holders of these old head rights F"
The public domain of Georgia was disposed of
originally by head rights or grants, not exceed
ing 900 acres by careful survey, to each head
OF a family and actual settler. This continued
until 1893, when il was discovered that the most
gigantic frauds had been practiced upon the
State.
The lottery system was then adopted, and
the property of the commonwealth, as it were,
gambled away to its lasting disgrace and
INJURY
Hon. Absalom Chappell in his Historical
Notes on Georgia" exposes very fully the
enormous frauds which were perpetrated under
the head right system Thus the following ex-
tract made from the statement of the Surveyor
General to the Finance Commission, composed
of Judge Berrien, Judge VIM. w. Holt and Mr..
Chappell himself. conveys the following
astounding results in the five counties we shall
quote from.
Let us first give the actual area OF the coun-
ties referred to:
Montgomery county contains, acres. 407, $50
Washington county contains, acres. 416, 720
Franklin county contains, acres. ....... 499, 200
Glynn county contains acres .......... 253, 40
Wilkes county contains, acres. ......... 1923, $40
Total, actual area .............-.... 800, $50
Now look upon this picture. There were
issued grants for each of these counties as per
the maps and records on file in the proper Office,
in acres, for
Montgomery county ................... 7,436, 975
Washington county ................... 5,01605S
FRANKLIN county ..........-............ o,12o,o4e
Glynn county. Observation-Disclosures. 7S375
Wilkes county 1924 72O
uo+aI .o,o,nt % oorac oQe